Second language acquisition

[Ginny Mueller Gathercole]

Dear Vince,

In response to your message to me, OK, first, here is a zip file of 
the whole report we submitted to the Welsh Language Board.  The 
summary chapter is probably the most useful to you, although the 
"meat" of the study is in Chapter 4, on the verbal questionnaire we 
gave parents.

Just to clarify--The study was on parents' transmission practices 
with regard to Welsh, so it isn't directly related to your question 
about education.  But the findings of our study are directly relevant 
in the following way:

1)  It is clear that parents (and teachers, of course, although we 
did not interview or test teachers in this study) use the language 
that they are most comfortable and most fluent in for speaking to 
their children.  If they grew up speaking Welsh, they will speak 
Welsh to their children.

2)  People become fully fluent in the language if adults are speaking 
Welsh to them as children.  When there is only partial input in the 
language (I mean in terms of time of exposure to Welsh), there is a 
slight delay in development in Welsh, although children in all groups 
tend to 'catch up' for most structures.

3)  However, it is not clear that all groups 'catch up' with regard 
to complex structures, which take everyone longer to learn.  It may 
be that the children who were not hearing as much Welsh on a daily 
basis do not fully acquire such complex structures.  This can 
ultimately have knock-on effects for the survival of the language.

4)  EVERYONE learns English fully.  This is clear from the adults we 
tested as well as from the children.  The dominance of English is 
such that, as I said before, children cannot help but learn it.

5)  One other factor that I think is highly relevant is that speaking 
a language to FRIENDS as children is very important to the ultimate 
attainment in that language (and perhaps to affect towards the 
language).  We found this to be true for both the adults we tested 
and the children.

6)  It is worth commenting on the Welsh bilingual situation versus 
the Miami situation.  In Miami, you can find adults whose command of 
English is not perfect.  This is not true in Wales.  In Miami, there 
is a constant influx of new immigrants who bring a good source of 
'native' Spanish--which is good in that it means children can hear 
Spanish being spoken by fully fluent speakers, but whose command of 
English is limited.  As children may be hearing these limited English 
speakers as part of their input for English, this can affect those 
children's ultimate attainment of English.  In Wales, this is not a 
factor.  There is not a large pool of Welsh speakers whose command of 
English is limited.  This means that virtually all of the English 
that children are hearing here is highly fluent.

I assume that the Cree situation would be more similar to Wales in 
this regard than to Miami.  This means that the children in the 
community should have little problem acquiring English as fully 
fluent speakers.  (In fact, I would put money on it if I had the 
opportunity to bet on it!)

I am also attaching some work we've done on children's acquisition of 
Welsh here.  We've made it our practice to divide children according 
to the language(s) spoken in the home.  And our consistent finding 
(which is parallel with our findings in Miami) is that attainment in 
the minority (and majority) language is directly related to the 
amount of exposure in the language.

Finally, in both the Miami and Wales case, we have found that 
children TEND to speak English on the playgrounds, etc., especially 
if they know the other child comes from an English background (even 
if that child knows Welsh).  If children are attending schools that 
use English as the medium of instruction, this means the minority 
language is going to be pushed even more into the background, and the 
prediction is that it will eventually die.

Oh, and one other thing--One reason why the Welsh language policy for 
education has been so successful is because EVERYONE goes to school 
through the medium of Welsh.  This means that all children become 
fairly competent in Welsh, not just the kids coming from 
Welsh-speaking families.  This is important for a few reasons: (1) it 
means that people can speak Welsh in everyday conversations without 
feeling they might be 'excluding' someone; (2) it means that 
attitudes towards Welsh are quite positive--it's not an "us" versus 
"them" situation, as it tends to be, unfortunately, in Miami.  This 
latter point is just as important for the speakers of the minority 
language (I mean children who come from Welsh-language homes) as it 
is for those coming from English-speaking homes: it means that they 
do not have to struggle with issues of identity (e.g., do I want to 
be more like "them"--which might mean giving up my home language) as 
much as some groups might in other contexts (e.g., in the Miami 
context).  (3) It helps ultimately to ensure the survival of the 
language.

Oh, I must also mention literacy.  The educational establishment is 
going to be concerned about literacy issues.  One thing you can 
mention is that in the Miami study (in the Oller & Eilers 2002 
volume, Multilingual Matters), the one area in which knowledge in one 
language carried over to knowledge in the other was in reading and 
literacy skills.  Thus, learning reading and literacy in one language 
does not necessarily prejudice those skills in the other language; in 
fact, they promote those skills in the other language.

Well, I hope that is all of some help.  If you should need further 
comments, do not hesitate to ask.

Best wishes,
Ginny

P.S.  I think I'll copy this to the CHILDES info exchange, in case 
anyone has any further comments on these issues.


-- 

Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Ph.D.
Professor

Ysgol Seicoleg                           	School of Psychology
Prifysgol Cymru, Bangor	                 	University of Wales, Bangor
Adeilad Brigantia 	 			The Brigantia Building
Ffordd Penrallt 				Penrallt Road
Bangor LL57 2AS					Bangor LL57 2AS
Cymru                                    	Wales
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